Seperate Main forums (categories) with style. Replace the default vB to fit a better width.

You can see the result on this site, on the forumhome page, and in each categories where you see sub-forums.

First, it seperate the categories on home page.

Second, it replace the DEFAULT thead of the forumbit listing on FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY templates so you can choose the width of the « lastpostby » block.

This is one of the most requested feature for the admins who use the default vBulletin templates for forum listing.

in AdminCP >> vBulletin Options >> Forum Listings Display Options, you now have this part:

Many visitors were hit by a sudden wall lately, because the site was closed impulsively in late october, for no apparent reason. We are now reopening the site, with 5 months of evaluations, negociations and upgrades.

More than 100 000 lines of code have to be checked out because we have the biggest repository of vBulletin products on the market and i’m actually the only one on task.

A lot of small enhancements are switched from paid to freebies, for the pleasure of the clients here. A lot of new enhancements are to be added to the list of paid scripts too, because i am now handling more copyrights on abandonned products. These will be added continuously to the database when the codes are complete and upgraded to the latest vBulletin version *(3.8.x actually)

Some coders are joining the party in the next days, the complete list of the staff will be displayed when we’re ready to open. We plan a re-open in the first days of march, even if we are unsure of the day, because we have some systems to check before that.

But you are welcome to visit and make some requests.

I was witting some of the base engine (the OOP part) and i was wondering if i should use the PHP 5 standards or allow backward compatibility? If we do require PHP 5, we can make a much powerful engine.

the automatic-tags thing on vb.org is just crap. it use the thread title to generate tags. logically this is pointless, and even google is against the idea. it bring nothing to the meta search, it bring no real resumé of your thread, and it is not bringing real tags anyway.

My idea is different, when you create your thread, once it is posted you can see the Tags area in the bottom of the page — usual process… the difference come by the script i will post soon.

In the same path than tagthe.net – Webservice that tags your resources the little tool would simply be a little button in the « Edit Tags » field, and it would generate a list of tags depending on the thread title and first post content.

The logic will be the one of google keywords generator, using % of height in words to generate the most important keywords in the list and make them tags. It will not generate the list officially, but will just add the results in the « Add Tags » field, seperated by commas. The user can then choose the ones to keep.

The engine coded (in OOP) will be reusable in a cronjob, if you want, to force per-forum the generation of X tags per threads that do not have a tag stored.

if you see a lot of updated threads these days, it’s because i re-post the older releases, with new screenshots, newer product files, and descriptions… lol

i posted the Freebies, which are simple, quick and dirty addons… i minimize the list of paid products from my list because they are the only ones which will be « supported »… the freebies need no update or support. and they usually are small tools of 10 lines and smaller…

This will simply calculate the average posts per day a member have on the forum, and display it below the « last visit » in the navbar.

The usage is simple… a lot of sites are asking their members to be very active on their forum or they get lower permissions etc. This little tweak will tell the users if they perform as requested!

— This one is again a no template/files edit. simply upload the product, and tada!

Ok so i did all the extra thread fields stuff for new threads, and i am starting on replys and i’m wondering how should we do this? Should the extra fields be displayed with the quick reply area? Or should we add a new page which the user is brought to after submitting there reply?

When visiting forumdisplay’s page, we will see the tags cloud related to that forum… only tags related to this forum and its sub-forums will be shown.

This is a basic feature, simple…

How to transform a forum into a Top List?!

simple: One forum per theme, each new thread is an entry, posted by the site owner, with title, url, desc.

visitors click the link to the url, and that hit is counted. same for the opposite, as the site owner can put a tag on his site to let his visitors vote to the site…: the vote link redirect to our toplist and a specific field will count the pro/con votes. people can even have permission to post comments if permission « can reply to others threads » is active…

we are not using the actual vB rate-thread engine because guests can not vote AND because on TopList we usually let visitors vote once per X days. but this can be using the rate-thread engine anyway, just putting the result in a specific field.

Details: difference with other TopList?!…

– we can change the threadbit display to show really a toplist, this is easy. you can also have a specific theme for each toplist by applying a theme for each forum you transform… no code needed

– we can have moderated entries without having to code a system. no code needed

– we can force people to register to vote. no code needed

– your forum can easily be hosting as much sub-forums that will become independant toplists. no code needed

… a lot can be done.

what i think is a Bundle, with Toplist, Webring, and Links Directory, Sites Reviews *(like all these CSS Galeries!)

ok, i have good way to test the future « import » scripts we will have. i install a lot of addons to a parenting site i’m building, like Lionel’ tools, Classifieds, Photopost Reviews etc…

so when we are ready with a similar product, let’s say we code a Product Reviews engine, we will have to produce some import script available to all new clients, so they can import their Photopost Reviews content in the forum MTF!…

let’s pretend that the main feature of these imports is to keep the actual structure of their engine, Photopost Reviews have categories, we can set a _import forum (hidden at first, viewable by admin) where all these categories will be recreated as sub-forums and the content posted as new threads…

if we do the same for all our imports, the bridge will be easy to write for all… instead of craping the way ImpEx is built.

the imports will have to be from existing vBulletin products first, and if someone have an external software to plugin, it will become a paid job for sure… we need to make money someway! (100% salary to the coder who write the import for first client, and then we see for distro)

what do you think of this?